Are Referees Favouring the Raps Now?

At the beginning of the season there was a general consensus on this board, on other blogs and even in the main stream media that the Raptors were getting a raw deal from the referees. Much of that talk disappeared shortly after the Charlotte debacle.

Even as the Raps were stinking it up on their disastrous western road trip there wasn't much discussion about poor officiating around this team.

So what happened? Did we get used to be f$#ked over? Did the refs start respecting us? Was it just a coincidence?

The reality is .. people were complaining because we werent playing well or winning .. looking for excuses. Ya, there were some bad calls, no doubt .. but never any conspiracy.

When you take the ball hard to the hoop (see: TROSS on LA last night .. where he basically said you better foul me or Im dunking this shit on your head) - you get the call. When you go into a group of people and flail your arms (like DD was getting in a habit of doing) .. the refs dont tend to bail you out.

DD has learned to be better at it (he doesnt really take it harder per se .. but he does a little two step where he goes around the guy and lays it in ... which is fine .. whatever works)

Bottom line - this was a non issue then and is a non issue now. We are playing better .. thus we get more calls. Thats how the league works ..

Good point Matt52.
So maybe we only notice it in close games. Of which there were many at the beginning of the season.

Definitely noticed in close games and there were many at the start of the year. While Raps were in tight games, they hardly helped their cause. Remember how many games were described as "Raps played great but for the _____ quarter" or "Raps need to play for a full 48 minutes"?

The universal rule is to place blame for losing with officiating being a convenient target, star players and the coaching staff also. My current favourite to throw under the bus whenever things are going wrong is Bryan Colangelo.

Yeah, I'm with the whole theory that you just notice more when they're playing bad. Don't think the refs are very good in teh league in general. Some teams and players might get favorable calls, but for bad calls, everybody gets screwed pretty equally. Some nights Toronto gets more bad calls, but some nights they definitely get good calls too.

There is no question, that the Charlotte game changed things. When the NBA has to go out of its way to apologize for its refs blowing the game, and allowing Taylor to manhandle Derozan all game. There was a major change in the refereeing since then. To the point, where I saw the refs trying to help our team and the Raptors still blowing games.

There is no question that the refereeing has changed and not necessarily for the better, except if you are a biased Raptors fan.

The NBA has always had a referee problem and it looks like it comes from top down. The last 7/8 games where we were playing well were all against mediocre to bad teams. If we were playing teams like the Heat or Thunder than they would get all the calls.

It's the worst part about this league.. hopefully once Adam Silver takes over he'll change things up - but I'm not holding my breath.

I don't think it's a conspiracy. I just think that we've been bad for a long time and we're a Canadian team.
The first is easy to explain, we've been a bad team for so long and have no significant names on our jerseys so we don't get the benefit of the doubt.

The second one is about competing in a country that is told the moment they come out of the womb that they are the greatest country in the world and the most important thing is beating other countries...and then when this is compounded by the million other things that growing up in America instills in them and bingo the refs have a natural psychological predisposition to favour their countries own teams. I don't think it's intentional. I think it's just their subconscious programming being played out.

And now that that clip of Amir has gone viral with articles in USA Today and Sports Illustrated about a f*ckin' double dribble? Are you kidding me? How many bad calls are in a basketball game? But they decide to write countless articles about this one.
Don't be surprised if we get reamed even worse by the refs now that they are being publicly shamed for making this call.